Strategy

Next time I’m in Orlando, I’m going to see Scott Johnson. He lives about an hour away in Daytona Beach and has developed a solar-powered Internet “hub” system (running Ubuntu GNU/Linux) that he builds to order. In the video below, he talks about the what, why and how of his system. Incredible work, and well worth watching.

His objective is to bring computers and the Internet to places that have no connectivity, no phone service, and no electricity.

On the wiki, I was able to see that there is a SolarNetOne installation running in Katsina State University, Nigeria right now, providing wireless connectivity and “Internet Cafe” access to hundreds of people. Scott also tells me that they’re in Tunisia and Benin as well, with more requests coming all the time.

Find out more on his website at GNUveau Networks.

(h/t Christian Ledermann)
(thanks to Roblimo for getting me better embed code for the video)

Cheryl Heller, from Heller Communication Design, is spending the morning with us at the Pop!Tech Fellows program. We’re getting a crash course in branding and, “creating a brand promise”. Branding is more than a pretty logo or a nice website, it’s everything that you say, do or are perceived as. It’s what makes up the organization and it’s what people understand of you.

I try to pay attention to the Ushahidi brand, but I got a rude awakening as Cheryl asked us to each stand up and give an elevator pitch on our organization. Embarrassingly, I had to stand up and stutter through some half-baked pitch on Ushahidi. Needless to say, I’m already working hard at getting this whole brand a lot tighter - all the more important as we have a growing community that needs to easily speak about the brand as well.

Brand Promise

It’s what you promise to deliver. It’s not your mission, vision and values. It is the commitment that the business makes to each of the people who interact with it. It works two-ways - they first capture what is unique and valuable about an organization, and then inform the actions necessary to make it true. An Example:

“Ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen.”
- Ritz-Carleton Hotels

Ushahidi’s Elevator Pitch and Brand Promise

I was paired with Heather Fleming, of Catapult Design, to help each other figure out our brand promise. Cheryl came by to help us boil down some of these thoughts and channel them towards what it should really be.

When I boiled down the Ushahidi elevator pitch (and I’m still working on it), I came up with this:

In a crisis or disaster, ordinary people have deeper insight into what’s going on around them than either the government or the news media. When you gather that information in aggregate, you start to see the bigger picture much more clearly.

Ushahidi is a platform that allows you to crowdsource crisis information by SMS, email and the web. We believe that gathering that information is key to saving lives and speeding recovery during an emergency.

It’s free and open source software, which means that anyone, anywhere in the world can use this platform.

After much iteration, and something I’m still working on, is the following for Ushahidi’s brand promise:

“We open a window to the world. Making the invisible visible by providing simple tools, used by ordinary people in extraordinary times so that others can act on it.”

Takeaways

An invaluable exercise is to really learn to listen to others talk about your organization and brand. Hearing Heather and Cheryl talk about what their perceptions of Ushahidi is was more valuable that me endlessly talking about what I think it is.

What is Ushahidi to you? How do you see it, and what’s the promise that you hear/see in us?

I’ve had a rather active 5 days in Nairobi. Eventful enough to give an update on what’s going on with the Ushahidi developers, the pilot projects and some mobile phone fun. I head out tomorrow for Johannesburg for the MobileActive conference, and will also be attending the Friday night meetup and Barcamp Jozi on Saturday.

Ushahidi Smartphone Developments

(more on the Ushahidi blog)

Steve Mutinda put together a working Ushahidi Java application - and surprised me with it, this Saturday. It works well, and he and Wilfred Mworia are hard at work on the Ushahidi API to ensure that this app and the Ushahidi iPhone app both can sync with the database easily.

Speaking of iPhone apps, Chris Blow and Joe Jones have finished making changes from the feedback received on the first mockups. Wilfred Mworia starts this week on his new iPhone to get this working. We’re thinking it will take about 3 weeks.

(We’re still looking for feedback on the iPhone screens)

Ushahidi Devs Meetup

Just last night we had a great Ushahidi dev meetup in Nairobi. The combination of brains and energy in the room was just incredible. We ate good food, got up to speed on the latest Ushahidi news, and had a geeky good time.

One of our advisory board members was there as well, Patrick Meier, from the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. He fit right in, as he also grew up in Kenya and went to secondary school in Nairobi.

Jason Mule and Wilfred Mworia are going to start running monthly Ushahidi dev sessions, so get with them if you want to jump in.

Pilot Project Meetings

The last, but probably one of the more important things that I’ve been doing while in town, is the meetings I’ve been having with the different organizations that have agreed to test out the alpha release of Ushahidi. This is extremely important for us, as it gives us a chance at some feedback and direct hands-on experience with launching Ushahidi instances in the wild.

More updates on this as we get through them, but in short, everyone is very excited about being a part of the pilot and the potential for Ushahidi to change the way the gather and visualize information from the field.

I’ve had some recurring thoughts over the last couple weeks, mostly pertaining to how technologists in Africa present ourselves, and how those outside Africa see us. How does “Brand Africa” - from the technology angle - play out, and why? What is unique that we offer to the world, and why should African technology matter in the global context?

It’s about “Brand Africa”

We need to re-frame the way we think about technology in Africa before we can expect others outside of Africa to do the same. Our challenge is to get people to realize that there is a real competitive advantage to developing and testing software in Africa. After all, if it works in Africa, it will work anywhere.

The development conditions are unreliable and the environment is harsh. It isn’t fun to work off slow internet connections or deal with expensive and poor mobile phone networks. All of these things, and more, make just the technological side of developing in Africa a challenge, which is why it’s also a particularly good place to try new things.

If we embrace those handicaps, we might find that there’s a silver-lining inside.

African technology exported to the world

Fring and Ubuntu are two popular products coming out of South Africa that have gone global. There are more though. When Ken Banks built FrontlineSMS, he first tested and developed it within the African context. Ushahidi is being developed in Africa because these are the conditions that will make it work anywhere in the world.

In the enterprise solutions space there are a couple companies that do some good work. Two examples of this are Herman Chinery-Hesse’s Softtribe in Ghana, and Microhouse in Kenya. Some of their solutions are for the local markets, and some are used in bidding on international projects.

Africa as a testing grounds for new applications

There’s a really neat application called Qik, which allows you to stream video live from your phone to a website. It has amazing potential for live video reporting, especially in a war zone. So, that’s just what David Axe did - and it failed miserably. Why? Because Qik designed their application not thinking of the unreliable and poor data connections found in much of the developing world.

David gives a couple suggestions:

First, there should be a “store” function, whereby you can shoot a video in some austere location, save it to your phone’s memory, then stream it later once you’ve got a solid network.

Second, Qik needs some way to buffer videos so that, if the software briefly loses its wireless network connection, it doesn’t also lose the whole video.

Granted, Qik is probably not aiming at a global market, just the US and Europe. However, it’s a good example of how creating or testing software to work in harsh settings can make your product more robust and help you think of simple solutions (like David’s) that can make your product better for everyone.

Final Thoughts

Most people outside of Africa don’t align any type of technological edge to what we do here on the continent. In fact, most are surprised when a developer from Africa pops up on the international stage at all. Though there are fewer software developers in Africa per capita relative to their Western counterparts, what most don’t realize is that those few are really quite talented.

This means the South Africans as well as their counter parts in Ghana, Uganda and Senegal. We’re all in this together, whether we like it or not. Remember, to outsiders we’re one homogeneous landmass. What we each do reflects on everyone, whether we’re creating for local or global markets.

Finally, let’s first realize that the challenges we face also provide excellent opportunities and a competitive advantage. Then, let’s start creating world-class software here, and start exporting it to the world.

(Brand Africa image via Brand Africa Project)

Just today Google has shown that they are willing to invest in African mobile phone businesses. Does Google’s purchase of an equity stake in Mobile Planet mean the big web/mobile money will start flowing throughout Africa? Not necessarily, but it made me think of a conversation that I tend to have a lot in my travels.

The topic of conversation usually turns to this; what type of web or mobile application can you build to make some serious money in Africa? Though there are many answers to that question, as I believe there are many options for successful web and mobile companies in Africa, there are only a few that I think of as “sure things”.

Any entrepreneur is looking to either a) create a company with solid cash flow and grow it, or b) create a solid company with value and then sell it (or have an IPO). On the web that takes some well-known paths, and the most common is option “b” where the entrepreneur’s sell their company to a larger web entity (Amazon, Google, eBay, Nokia…etc).

A “Sure Thing” Formula

Create a Jabber-based chat application that works on the mobile phone and the web, grow it to a 1-2 million users within a region, sell to Google.

Why does this work?
You build your chat application with Jabber since it can interface with Google’s GTalk. Jabber is free, and also happens to be the what a couple other major applications are built on (see South Africa’s Mxit). Google is trying to grow in Africa, and I assume would be extremely happy to pay a very healthy amount of money to acquire an application with millions of active users that is built on the same protocol as their own chat system.

Challenges

The formula for this particular idea is built on two premises. First, that you can actually get a couple million users within an African region using your chat application. Second, that Google wants more users on their platform(s).

The first challenge is born from the fact most mobile phone users in Africa don’t use data enabled phones, so they can’t run a Jabber application on their phone. Mxit’s answer to this in South Africa was to show that for 10% of the cost of a normal SMS, you could send a message through their system (which happens to be a highly bastardized customized Jabber app). Your goal is to get people who don’t have a data enabled phone to upgrade to one.

The second challenge is beyond your control. You’ll never know if Google wants to buy you out until they come knocking. However, if let’s just say you shouldn’t have to many problems monetizing a system that has 1-2 million users on it anyway…

Your goals to overcome these challenges is found in tapping into communities and spreading your app virally to gain critical mass with speed. Once it spreads, the first application like this to reach a decent amount of saturation will be the winner, even if it has some faults (see Twitter).

Opportunities

Though chat is the core of your application, that is both web and mobile phone accessible, it’s not the only value added service that you can provide. With some creativity, you can add services that allow more people to tap into, including locally relevant events, news, marketplaces, personals, jobs, etc…

On top of these services, you’ve got the advantage of building on an open source platform that other services use as their core.

Lastly, and most importantly. If you were to reach even 500,000 users you would have an incredibly viable opportunity for advertising revenue. The ability to target specific advertisements, or sponsorships, through the platform make it a marketers dream. Basically, you might not need, nor want, a buy out after all.

In Summary

Is it really a “sure thing”? No, every business move has inherent risk and depends on execution of the strategy.

Is it a good basic idea that could be built into a real product with a solid exit strategy? Yes, undoubtedly so.

We’ve already seen the booming success of Mxit in South Africa. There’s no reason to believe that you couldn’t have a margin of that same success in East, West or North Africa with the same type of service. If you build it with an end-goal of Google integration in it at the end, you also set yourself up for a real possibility of a buy out.

Where 2.0 has started. One series of speakers down, and much more to come. I have the distinct impression that I’m going to have some serious information overload by the end of the day…

I thoroughly enjoyed Adrian Holovaty of EveryBlock’s talk. His partner Paul wrote a couple pieces on rolling your own maps recently that I loved. They’re breaking down the reliance on the mega mapping API’s (Google, Yahoo, MS) as the only way to show your geographic data. Adrian also talked about something that I often think of; using more than just points in showing map data. We need more polygons (ex: heatmaps) and lines.

Nokia’s Michael Halbherr, head of Location Based Services (LBS) did a short talk on Ovi, their platform for seemless mapping integration between mobiles and the web. He made a point of saying that Nokia is mobile/guidance centric, not web/location centric.

Next up was Sean Gorman, who is doing some really interesting things with his organization(s) FortiusOne and Geocommons. His biggest thoughts/concerns were over dealing with massive data sets and the emerging semantic web. To that end he announced Finder!, which I have to admit seems pretty slick. His demo was showing how you could mashup private data sets (your company’s local sales data) with open census data, all available for download as KML, CSV or shape files. It’s slick, go sign up for the beta.

Last up was John Hanke of Google Earth, who announced two items:

• Google Earth’s Geo Search API launching
• GIS data relationship with ESRI in ArcGIS 9.3

John mentioned that, “maps help us organize, plan, provide context and decide.” I think that’s what has made me love maps since I was a kid, and why I’m so interested in the ability to do dynamic and real-time mapping.

For thoughts and analysis on what is happening here at Where 2.0, I’ll pass you off to some mapping gurus:

Off the Map
All Points Blog
Mapufacture Blog
Google Earth Blog
The AnyGeo Blog
High Earth Orbit
Very Spatial

[This is one of my longer posts, so here is a brief synopsis, followed by some more detailed thoughts and ideas:

Countries like Kenya, in times of crisis, aren't necessarily closed for tourism. There are often many great, safe places to go on holiday. How could technology be used to create ways for possible tourists to find current, honest and credible information about a location before they cancel their trip due to inflated news stories that make you think a whole country is burning?]

Tourism in the Balance
I just got off the phone with someone who is heavily invested in the East African tourism market. As would be expected in times of unrest, tourists are canceling their flights, hotel rooms and safaris in Kenya. The long-term repercussions of the current crisis will hurt this $900 million industry badly. CNN recently did an article on just this, stating:

Conservationists in parks such as the Masai Mara say they rely on tourism to keep the parks up and running. But even though no violence has been reported in the parks, and no tourists have been killed in the violence, tourists are still too scared to come to Kenya, officials say.

So things are looking bleak in Kenya, but the same types of things happen elsewhere in Africa whenever there is civil unrest, natural disasters or some other type of crisis. The international news sends back just these images, that might only be affecting small pockets of the country, and an industry is ruined for 2-3 years.

Challenges Beget Opportunities
So, as with every challenge, there lies an opportunity - many times with a technology component that will help counter the “bad news only” media. In this particular case, we know that some parts of Kenya are in rough shape, and that no one should go there who doesn’t have to. However, we also know that much of the country is safe and not likely to see any type of disturbance.

If I were to create a strategy for how Kenya can better show the world how things are in the tourism industry, I would start by creating an accessible flow of hyper-local information. You see, tourists need to know that the travel to their destination will be uneventful, and that their safari will still be fun and without fear of any domestic disturbances.

The low barriers to getting a website online make that a particularly attractive option, and likely a key component of any strategy. I would also consider employing a couple contributors on the ground in Kenya that would be able to go from location to location and report truthfully on why, or why not, to go there. They could upload videos, pictures and interviews of people on vacation.

While we’re at it, we might as well provide a map-based view of the country that showcases the most recent news, good and bad areas to go, reviews and submissions by tourists about each hotel, game park and tour operator. Basically, it has a lot of the components you would find on TripAdvisor, IgoUgo, TravBuddy or any other macro-travel guide, except that this would have up-to-date hyper-local information that only people on the ground there could provide.

A Video
An interview with Dr. Achieng Managing Director of the Kenya Tourism Board. It provides another perspective on the issue, especially how it affects everyday Kenyans. Alos, he covers the challenge it faces and opportunity provided by the crisis:

While blogging, emails, Twitter and the internet are doing a great deal of good getting the news out of what’s going on in Kenya to the rest of the world, I find myself troubled. You see, the communication that needs to be happening is at the grassroots level. Everyday Kenyans do not have access to any of these services.

Let’s put our minds and capabilities towards solving real problems for people beyond the technologically elite.

Take the current state of affairs in Kenya as an example. With every problem comes an opportunity. In this case, we’re talking about finding a way to open up better communications to not just the African digerati and blogosphere, but the everyday Kenyan as well.

The primary means of communication during an emergency in Kenya is via SMS - on their mobile phones. Some of the problems with the current structure of mobile communications in any African region during a crisis:

• Many disbursed one-to-one communications (SMS)
• Lack of reports from people on the ground - traditional media can only cover so much. If there was ever a need for citizen journalism, then this is it. (this goes beyond what Ken talked about in just citizen monitoring of the polls)

With the just the two problems outlined above, it’s possible to see what kind of technology solution might be useful. That’s the type of service and/or platform that we should be building towards. Beyond the usefulness of such a service in a crisis, it would likely be a profitable business venture in less trying times.

[Check out two good posts on Kenya from a technology angle by Joshua Goldstein at Harvard's I&D blog and Mark at Mashable]

Another good tech idea from Ory at Kenyan Pundit:

“Google Earth supposedly shows in great detail where the damage is being done on the ground. It occurs to me that it will be useful to keep a record of this, if one is thinking long-term. For the reconciliation process to occur at the local level the truth of what happened will first have to come out. Guys looking to do something - any techies out there willing to do a mashup of where the violence and destruction is occurring using Google Maps?”

There is a group of Kenyan techies, called Skunkworks, that talk on a Skype channel regularly. It’s an interesting mix of developers who share news and talk passionately about the potential of the web and mobile market in Kenya. In our conversation last week, the discussion of local content for specific regions kept popping up.

A fine example of local content would be MyStocks, a website for the Kenyan stock market. It is hyperlocal content designed only for people interested in a specific area, in this case Kenya.

So, going off of my last post on what types of applications are you developing - which is really a foundational question that each developer should ask themselves before starting on anything - I decided to share a couple of ideas for web apps that could work on the local level. The caveat here is that ideas are just ideas, it’s the execution on anything that makes something work.

1) A Country-wide Real Estate Site
After building eppraisal.com, this is a natural one for me to think of. The keys to this kind of application are the property data (land size, cost history, building size, owner info, etc.) and mapping.

At first glance mapping seems like the Achilles heal of this idea. Visualization of data is important, and each country has a different level of mapping. That variable can be taken care of on a couple different levels. First, Google is hiring for that position, so it’ll get easier everywhere soon enough. Second, crowdsourced alternatives and/or working with your own tools are a real possibility.

The reality is that though mapping is really nice to have, it only becomes useful when you have a lot of people with enough bandwidth to handle it. More important is the need for someone to digitize the data that is currently gathering dust in offices throughout Africa. The key here is the property data, even if you never created a web application and just had that data, it could be licensed out.

Cities are the biggest target for this type of application, but as mapping and bandwidth increase rural areas become more interesting. A mobile application that feeds certain data fields to interested parties is a natural fit as well.

2) Business-focused File Transfer Application
File transfer speeds within a country are much faster than international, especially in most African countries that don’t have a large pipe connecting them internationally. Many file sharing services, like DropSend or YouSendIt, just don’t make sense to use in some areas of Africa. However, a local alternative that allows local businesses to easily share large files could be very useful.

A nominal charge for use of this service would be accepted. After all, it’s a lot faster and more reliable than burning a CD/DVD and then sending it across a traffic congested town with a guy on a motorcycle.

3) A Local Shopping/Pricing Website
The concept here is built around the idea of people being able to get alerts (SMS or email), or be able to check prices of goods via their mobile phone or using a website. You would need to be able to build a database of products with their corresponding prices.

The closest example of an idea like this is MamaMikes, where you can buy vouchers for goods in Kenya online. Imagine that concept, but with a larger database of goods compared across multiple merchants. The trick in getting something like this to work is having the stores realize that they sell more goods when people can find them online.

Just as there is a business built up around pricing, reviewing and selling products online elsewhere in the world, this can work on the local level in many parts of Africa as well.

Own the Data
One last point worth mentioning is to try and be the owner of the data that you collect for your application. If you are creating a local shopping/pricing site, then try to create the best database of business information, location and ownership in the area. This data is valuable and can be licensed to others, or made available through an API that brings you more traffic or revenue.

This point can’t be driven home enough. There is very little data/content on Africa available on the web. Whoever captures and creates a database of that information will have an incredibly lucrative product. By the way, this isn’t always easy to do, but then if it was it would already have been done.

The payoff comes to he who has the most complete and accessible local data.

[Update: The day after this post was written and we have an excellent case study. Nokia is buying up NAVTEQ, the mapping/GIS data provider for Google Maps, Microsoft and Yahoo for $8 Billion.]

A Google rumor and a Google patent have had the tech world talking this week.

Someone noticed that there was a patent by Google for a mobile component to GPay, their online payment system. It’s not a new concept, but it will be interesting if they do pull it off in conjunction with the rumor circulating about the new Google GPhone.

You see, there is a void in the market for a payment system that is accepted globally, but not necessarily tied to a bank or phone carrier. Any thoughts I have on what will eventually happen once they roll out any new device and/or payment system are pure speculation. I would like to believe that Google has a bigger picture in mind than just the US market when developing it though.

I’m sure the services work best together, but they would never tie a payment system to just one device. I’ll be happy to see either of them work in Africa. The GPay model branching out would make me the most excited though.

[I also find it interesting that PayPal is having some serious problems at the same time as rumors of this are coming out. PayPal needs some serious competition, and I hope this is it.]

In May of this year, a week before I got to South Africa, I was interviewed for South African Broadcasting Corporation’s (SABC) Radio 2000 show about AfriGadget. The interviewer asked me some questions that really made me start thinking about what AfriGadget has become and the platform it represents to continue fostering the type of change that needs to be encouraged in Africa.

I write more about this on my last AfriGadget post, where I talk about the evolution that the site is going through. What isn’t mentioned is that I’ll be spending a lot more time trying to make things happen. The team of editors and myself have come up with a strategic plan for growth that necessitates me directing more time to see it come to fruition.

I’m excited about the possibilities and the real world change that can happen when we actively do something, rather than just talk about it.

We’ll continue to bring you the same types of stories, augmented with some great new website features. If the right partnerships emerge, we’ll be leading some projects in Africa that create a way to invest in African micro-entrepreneurs directly.

If anyone would like to partner with us on a project, contact me.

What so many of us discuss about Africa is the desire to see things change. We apply the lenses that color our lives to the problem and come up with solutions that fit our world view. Challenges to that world view are hard for us to deal with, because it likely means a paradigm shift is needed in our own lives.

The Status Quo is a Failure
However, there is one constant - we all agree that change is needed. The status quo is the polar opposite of change, and in Africa can be summed up like this:

Africa has poor infrastructure, bad governance and poverty and that donating your Western money or time will help save Africa because Africa can’t save itself.

What generally happens is that Western governments and organizations continue to pour billions of dollars of money and resources into the same programs that have failed Africa for the last 30 years. This actually proves out two major fallacies with the status quo. First, that change comes by doing the same thing over and over again. Second, that Africa needs the West to change.

As Gavin Chait so eloquently stated while discussing the informal sector in Africa:

If the same proto-society received material support and charitable donations at every step of its evolution it would be like a man in a wheel-chair. Should that support suddenly be cut then the society is helpless and will fall apart. There is no amount of charity or support that can be given to a long-term supplicant that doesn’t reinforce the need for that charity or support. The more charity available, the less opportunity there is for the recipient to become self-sufficient.

If we truly want to see things change, then the prerequisite is to stop doing things that don’t work. It doesn’t mean that those in the West can’t be involved in the change, it means that we need to give up ownership of the problem and start investing in the new owners - the Africans.

The Need for Radical Ideas
Ethan Zuckerman wrote a brilliant article for the Boston Globe this week about the power of incremental development in Africa by Africans. He uses the example of Alieu Conteh’s mobile phone carrier in the Democratic Rep of Congo to demonstrate how African infrastructure and economic wealth can be grown through starting small.

…But perhaps the solution is to go in the other direction: phone companies could become incremental power companies. If base stations built significantly larger power generators — preferably using renewable energy sources as well as diesel — they could sell excess power to their surrounding communities.

That’s a radical idea, primarily because it disrupts the status quo.

If you read my blog regularly, you would likely get the impression that I think Africa’s problems will be solved by technology. Not true, but I do believe that technology will be one of the major catalysts for change in Africa. It’s not even radical actually, as we see it being played out in the mobile phone market every day on the continent.

Here are some radical ideas for change, and the people that are working them:

• Mobile phones as platform for business by Tradenet.biz
• South African news is being transformed by blogging (Amatomu) and new ways of reporting (The Sunday Times)
• News is starting to be reported on video using no computers, only mobile phones

In Summary
The lenses that color my world are tinted by technology, the need for investment capital and the idea that Africans need to own and make the change happen themselves. Am I part of that? Sure, if I remember that I’m not there to “save Africa”, but that I’m there to make a living, and do good through my business endeavors.

Providing opportunities for others (and myself) to create wealth is what I see as the best use of my time. A real world example would be Martin Fisher of Kickstart, who creates business opportunities as a business model. It’s a great idea and it’s a money making opportunity for everyone involved.

Some of the greatest insights on this site have come from the individuals leaving comments. Someone by the name of “Goat Herd” left one of those comments today, on one of my favorite blog posts “The Dark Continent: It’s Still Dark” from over a year ago. Thank you “Goat Herd”, and thanks to everyone else who enriches all of us by leaving comments and keeping the discussions going here.

This comment is worthy of a post entirely to itself, it’s well worth the read:

I strongly disagree with most of Ishtar’s and Yishlie’s views. I grew up in rural Kenya. I went to school barefoot. After classes, I’d till the land, herd the goats, then walk miles to fetch water and find firewood. There was no electricity, No TV, No phones … just an old transistor radio that had VOK (Voice of Kenya). The nearest hospital was miles away and was poorly manned and stocked. If it rained … the roads were impassible… If it did not… starvation was imminent. … Yes, we did not try to subdue the environment, … The Environment subdued us. We were at its mercy.

Although by local standards were not that poor … by global standards we were very poor. Our lives were uncluttered by modern technological advances… but, like our forefathers we spent a lot of our time just providing for our subsistence. It was a hard life with no rest in sight.

Later I moved to the city and then on to America which exposed me to very different experiences. Some bad, many good. I witnessed systems that work (or at least work better than any that I had known in the past). I realized that some of the problems we face today had long been solved by others. All that was needed was for us to adopt (and customize) those solutions to suit our particular circumstances. And here’s my big disagreement with Ishtar and Yishlie. …

There is nothing romantic or idealic about being poor. Only a person who has never been poor can entertain such a notion. Ishtar also seems to suggest that human warmth and material prosperity (or technological advancement) are mutually exclusive. I think the people that Ishtar talked to in Niger, would be just as warm even after rising out of poverty.

It is true that the West (and the rest of the world) can learn valuable lessons from Africa. But it is also true that Africa NEEDS to learn a whole lot from the rest of the world (Not just the west). In Africa, there are still too many systems that don’t work, too too many children dying of curable and preventable diseases, too many “involuntarily” iliterate people and too many people living hand to mouth their entire lives. Other societies have faced these same problems and overcome them. We need to borrow a leaf from them.

I am not saying that we should adopt everything western… No. We shouldn’t “copy” from them, we should “learn” from their experiences. There’s no shame in adopting solutions from others. This is not a contest to see who is “better” or who is more “original” between the west and Africa. This is about adapting to a changing world. … And we must adapt or perish.

Yes, I believe we can be prosperous and technologically advanced while still retaining our human warmth.

Ishtar suggested that we should get rid of corrupt governments and psychopathic bankers… I agree that we should … but …How do you do that ?

1. You can have a bloody revolution …

or

2. You can find ways to circumvent the corrupt government and psychopathic bankers

…. I believe that “White African’s” main point was that … The “African Digerati” is in a position to cause change by finding ways to circumvent corrupt governments, unnecessary red tape, bad banks and other barriers …

I will enumerate afew of the “projects” that i am currently aware of that a section of the African digerati is trying to implement.

1. Promoting the use of “Open Source software” in Kenya.
   A group of Kenyans here in the US are currently recording video lessons on how to obtain and use various open source softwares. They intends to distribute the DVDs for free (or almost free) to high schools, colleges and cybercafes. The goal is to expand the awareness and expertise in such software to a level where most business would be comfortable ditching their expensive softares for the cheaper open source.
2. Another group of Africans from Ghana has set up a money transfer system that allows them to send money back to Ghana for way less than they would using regular banks… The results… the local banks have had to lower their charges.
3. There’s a Kenyan selling organic food in Kansas. The food is grown by his fellow villagers in Kenya. Due to the ease of communication and funds transfer made possible by modern technology, he’s managed to start a mini-industry all alone without involving the government.
4. … and many others

… White African’s point … We can no-longer continue blaming corrupt African government and “evil ” multinationals for Africa’s woes without doing anything about it.

Now, at an individual level, we have the very real potential to cause significant positive social- economic changes . The beautiful part is that we can achieve this without having to make monumental personal sacrifices.

The New York Times is running a story on the promised, but undelivered, widespread high-speed internet that Greg Wyler’s Terracom promised 4 years ago.

Mr. Wyler, an executive based in Boston who made his fortune during the tech boom, said he would lace Rwanda with fiber optic cables, connecting schools, government institutions and homes with low-cost, high-speed Internet service. Until that point, Mr. Wyler, 37, had never set foot in Africa — he was invited by a Rwandan government official he had met at a wedding. Mr. Wyler never expected to start a business there; he simply wanted to try to help the war-torn country.

This is an interesting story, partly because here is a guy who wanted to invest in Africa and do a good thing. That’s what many people, including myself, are asking for. If outsiders want to help Africans, then do it through investment money, not aid. The problem is, Greg did just that and has yet to see a major return on his investment.

This is the type of negative investment activity that shines a bad light on Africa as a whole. Believe me, others will not invest because of his story. Regardless of whether it’s his fault, the Rwandan governments fault or any number of other things. The fact is, the investment isn’t panning out (yet), so it will scare off other investors.

Here’s another bleak quote:

The result is that Africa remains the least connected region in the world, and the digital gap between it and the developed world is widening rapidly. “Unless you can offer Internet access that is the same as the rest of the world, Africa can’t be part of the global economy or academic environment,” said Lawrence H. Landweber, professor emeritus of computer science at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, who was also part of an early effort to bring the Web to Africa in the mid-1990s. “The benefits of the Internet age will bypass the continent.”

So, while our governments mess around, squabbling over incoming undersea cables. And as the private sector telecoms monopolies kill our global competitiveness, what are we supposed to do?

Part of the answer is to band together and make a case for change. Take a look at what Eric Osiakwan is doing with AfriSPA and work with Google representatives like Joseph Mucheru in Kenya to get some legislative change working in our favor. Become part of the local community trying to do something - don’t just sit back and expect it to happen on its own.

Two things happened within the last month that made me realize the true value of social networks:

1. I signed up for Facebook (finally, after much prodding)
2. I met some fellow real estate bloggers yesterday

(bloggers meeting up OFFLINE)

How could these two incidents be related? Well, the first is pretty obvious - joining Facebook. It’s the social network that has all the cool kids raving about it right now. It’s good, really good, at connecting people and keeping them coming back. I’ve used many other social networking sites, but this is by far the most useful and smoothest operating one I’ve found.

The second item was more important, primarily because we had a conversation there that proved out the theory better than anything else. Marcus brought up the fact that he thought social networks were a complete waste of time, it’s only offline that’s valuable. Social networks are most useful as facilitators for offline connections.

I guess I hadn’t thought of it that way before.

Blogging can be useful for knowledge and as a public platform for one’s views. However, it shares something in common with social networking sites, in that it is also a way to network with people. Blogging can act as a catalyst for email and other forms of direct communication.

The value of blogging, and of being part of a social networking site, is that the people you meet and find through connections that you make online can be utilized in the offline world. Connecting to a larger hub of people, and being able to communicate with them all easily, allows you to leverage that group when doing things as diverse as looking for a new job, organizing a reunion or finding old friends.

The chance to meet with the bloggers at TED, as well as meet some great contacts for future business or employment, was the best example of this I can think of. The ongoing online connections will be useful for keeping in touch and doing a few projects - but the true value is when we do something again offlinedescend upon San Francisco, as real estate bloggers. The meetings that we have there, and the business that comes out of it will be the value for our blogging and connecting on social networks for the past couple years.

If you take part in these social networks, or if you blog, make sure you utilize the platform for it’s true potential - meeting people offline.